Scum mafia: On Cecil pond [Game Over]

Maybe we can work on BSG.

Though, honestly, I was struck with a new idea for Lewis Carroll Mafia

I’m actually less busy at work lately and would be completely available to help develop and co-mod either/both games.

Let me know. I am familiar with both worlds.

BSG is drain’s brainchild. I was just going to provide some supporting help.

Lewis Carroll just occurred to me after the poetry unit we just finished in reading.

Should I be worried that we are talking, or rather not talking about this game, as if it was already over?

I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the ghosts.

The bad news is that it really looks like we are at lylo. The good news is that just be throwing darts it looks like I have a 50-50 shot at hitting scum.

and before i forget:
vote spawn

Texcat, you say 50-50.

I would assume you are ruling me out, do you rule anyone else out?

This computer lost all its bookmarks, so I have to wait until tomorrow to get back on the BSG boards. But I’m totally game to power through working on it, and I’ll send you access, Mahaloth.

Sure.

For USCDiver, I think I’ve been clear on my feelings about his low-profile play (I’m against it.) I believe someone else (amrussell?) also was not too happy with USCDiver’s statement that he wasn’t saying much because every time he logged in someone else already said what he is thinking, which makes me see red. USCDiver’s attitude towards the game leaves little to analyze and too much wiggle room should he be scum. It’s a bad place for us to let this kind of game play remain prevalent in this game. For that reason I opined that I wouldn’t mind if storyteller ate USCDiver (or DiggitCamara at the time for similar reasons). As much as I would have liked USCDiver to have gotten eaten to placate my frustrations with him, I also knew that at that point in the game the possibility of a hidden doc and/or a hidden detective made such a play unpalatable for us.

More recently, I’m irked by USCDiver’s voting for Rysto and DiggitCamara on the previous lynch. I stated my position that I think everyone should vote for spawn and then vote for ONE player. USCDiver’s play yesterday illustrates why I feel that policy is best. Way back on Day One I got hammered by people saying that by letting everyone vote for two people we would be in a better position to find scum. To which I said bullshit. And now that we are neck deep into this game I point out that double votes are NOT helping us, they are hindering us.*
So let’s look at USCDiver’s voting for both Rysto and DiggitCamara.
(1) I note that USCDiver specifically unvoted spawn to vote for DiggitCamara late in the day. In other words, USCDiver could have just as easily unvoted Rysto and voted for DiggitCamara and spawn. But he did not.
(2) I have no idea whether this means USCDiver is Town or scum. We as a group had given everyone ‘permission’ to vote for two players so we can’t ‘blame’ him for doing so. However, I think voting for DiggitCamara while still voting for Rysto was a huge cop-out. It is this type of cop-out that I wanted to avoid way back on Day One.
(3) If Rysto turns out to be scum what does this mean? What does it tell us? It’s hard to tease out, but my feeling is by keeping votes on both Rysto and DiggitCamara USCDiver was hedging his bet. Whether or not hedging is inherently scummy, I don’t know. I do know that I would have been happier if USCDiver had to commit to either Rysto or DiggitCamara. If Rysto turns out to be Town, then things are murkier. USCDiver could very well be Town or he could be Scum angling to keep Rysto in the conversation for future lynch.

Finally there is USCDiver’s vote for DiggitCamara post claim. USCDiver seemed to miss the entire point that if DiggitCamara had disclosed earlier then that would eliminate he possibility of scum attempting to kill him, thus negating his power. I don’t know what to make of such nonsense. USCDiver is clearly wrong. I would go so far to say that DiggitCamara shouldn’t have claimed EVER. But I guess if he was convinced he was going down (I don’t think he necessarily was going to be the one getting lynched pre-claim). I also assume that DiggitCamara felt that my questioning was further endangering himself. Anyway, the timing of Diggit’s claim makes sense, and while I disagree with him enacting it, him sitting on his role was exactly what he should have done and I’m left wondering why USCDiver felt confident enough about DiggitCamara to vote for him post-claim.

I’m not loving USCDiver and I don’t mind killing him, but I have a better target. More soon.

(*Sidenote: perhaps at some point in the future if two vote games became more popular we would establish a basis from which to evaluate how scum play in response to two votes, but for THIS game, we have no idea.)

Despite TexCat’s relative lack of posting, I find the TexCat case of great interest. Back when TexCat asked storyteller to eat him I opined that such a move is reckless for scum even in a gamble to establish townie cred, there is that glaring possibility that storyteller just does it anyway despite his protests out of frustration/shitsandgiggles.
Many also opined about the possibility of a scum trap via blocker/redirector. Blocker we were less concern about. Redirector, much more so. This line of thinking is now moot based on the tasty meal of Red Skeezix.
Anyway. In light of DiggitCamara’s role, I’m left wondering what if TexCat’s ‘gamble’ wasn’t a gamble at all! What if TexCat knew he would survive a storyteller attack?

On one side we have DiggitCamara who was immune to scum nightkill. Specifically scum nightkill and only the nightkill coming from scum. The assumption (and I really wish DiggitCamara had clarified this with Chronos) is that storyteller could kill DiggitCamara. So if there is a Town power role that can’t be killed by scum, doesn’t it make sense that there is a scum power role that can’t be killed by storyteller?

I’m attracted to this type of symmetry. Neither is a true ‘scotsmen’ in that lynch would still affect them. Furthermore, it makes sense to give scum some kind of power and clearly they don’t have a redirector, roleblocker, or godfather. So what’s left? My assertion is that scum have a role that can’t be eaten by storyteller. It’s a non-zero power that isn’t all that powerful on the surface, but especially makes sense in the context of DiggitCamara’s power. So who could possibly have such a power and how would that person use it?

If storyteller attempted to eat TexCat, TexCat would live and the consequences would be bad for Town:

  • We might kill storyteller
  • we might assume scum have a roleblocker
  • All the while TexCat looks good. We certainly would not have assumed that TexCat was immune to storyteller’s kill. At least I wouldn’t have at the time.

My only concern with this view of TexCat is “overfitting” – whether or not I’m fitting the data to meet a conclusion. I don’t think I’m doing this (obviously) because prior to this case I haven’t been particularly suspicious of TexCat. If anything, I had been thinking TexCat is not scum because if he is the lack of posting is a crappy way for scum to win. Anyway, at first glance I think its pretty good. I strongly believe that scum must have some sort of power, and a Vig-immunity power ‘balances’ DiggitCamara rather elegantly.

Please pick apart as you see fit.

I rule myself out, naturally. The other 3 pondies can rule themselves out. Meeko, it looks like you are the only pondie with less than a 50% chance of hitting scum randomly. Of course, none of us will be throwing darts randomly; we’ll have 3 scum actively trying to mislead and confuse us.

I wish I could pick this apart. Unfortunately, it seems to make some sense, but it is NOT true. I just was totally convinced that Storyteller’s claim was a pack of scummy lies and was trying to expose Story as the scum I thought he was.

I am consistently disbelieving the pond’s claims. I didn’t believe Story, nor did I believe Diggit.

I don’t find sach’s theory to be all that convincing on its own. It fits, but there’s no real evidence in favour of it that isn’t equally in favour of TexCat being Town. However, the theory prompted me to go and review TexCat’s posts in this game, and I think that there is a lot of meat here:

This is TexCat’s Day One final vote. The main thing I want to point out is how much TexCat is waffling here. She’s “guessing” that peeker is scum, and if it were anyone else she’d be sure, but it’s peeker so please please please don’t blame me when this blows up in our faces. She also never really explains what peeker has done that’s scummy or what she thinks that peeker is trying to distract from, but she’s hardly the only peeker voter to do that.

On to Day Two:

Again she’s waffling. In this case she’s giving herself some wiggle room should Kelly flip, but what I find really significant here is that this begins a trend of her either downplaying the case against Kelly or actively distracting from it. I really have to wonder why she felt that a townie would need to search for a place for a Day One vote, but not scum. If anything I’d say it’s the other way around.

This begins a series of smudges on storyteller. The timing is quite signficant: Kelly is the leading vote-getter at 3, with story at 2. fluiddruid, the eventual lynch victim, hasn’t garnered a single vote yet. With 19 players alive and two more days before the deadline, Kelly isn’t in danger yet, but TexCat is positioning herself so that she can place a vote in opposition of a Kelly lynch if necessary.

Another smudge on story. She’s pushing his lynch pretty heavily, but isn’t willing to back it with a vote.

TexCat finishes the Day by avoiding the leading lynch wagons. Instead, she castigates Mahaloth for bandwagonning peeker – the very same bandwagon she herself joined!

Finally, at the beginning of Day Three, TexCat backs up her constant hounding of story with a vote. I find it very interesting that she declined to vote for story the Day before: had she done so when she voted for Mahaloth she would have put them in a tie. Instead, she holds off until she can make a safe vote that won’t attract much scrutiny. Also, TexCat’s perspective on why a scum would want to vote late is interesting, given that we now know that there was an early bandwagon on scum the Day before, and sure enough she voted less than 4 hours before the deadline that Day. TexCat spends the rest of the Day harassing story over the drawback to his role, and ends the Day with her “kill me” challenge to story that sachertorte has theorized about.
TexCat started Day Four with a vote on story, but Kelly’s soft claim soon took centre stage:

This is a weak reason to believe a claim, especially given the fact that Kelly had given so little information about his supposed role. I also find it very interesting that TexCat seemed to know in advance that Kelly was claiming to get the names at the beginning of each summer – Kelly didn’t reveal that detail until later that night.

Kelly posts the role PM and TexCat posts her support.

But the fatal flaw in Kelly’s claim is discovered quite quickly. TexCat backtracks right away and tries to divert attention to Oredigger. The conversation basically dies with a sure scum lynch coming, so let’s move on to Day Five. Actually, Day Six as TexCat missed pretty much all of Day Five for out-of-game reasons.

TexCat piggybacks on a Day 3 statement by Mahaloth to partially justify her vote on Natlaw 3 Days later. I really don’t like this. Mahaloth was Town, so we know that he was arguing honestly, but that doesn’t mean that he was necessarily correct.

That first sentence jumped out at me. I’ve just reviewed every single post and I’m not sure if TexCat has even mentioned Diggit once before this point. She certainly never commented on Diggit’s double-lynch position. On it’s own this doesn’t mean much, but I do find it odd that she never commented on it or looked at Diggit previously if Diggit’s double-lynch position bothered her so much.

Diggit soft-claims and then is prompted to post his PM, and TexCat pounces. I think that Meeko might be on to something here. A lynch would be the only way that the scum could get rid of Diggit, and with the voting being so tight this was the scum’s best chance to get it. I find TexCat’s reasoning about “handicapped” roles to be specious: I certainly wouldn’t consider a masons who can’t communicate to be handicapped. Masons being able to communicate is a nice little extra, but nothing big, and I’d say that allowing masons to communicate off-board is the execption, not the rule.

Two points to make here. First, note how TexCat is subtly trying to get Meeko to consider voting for sachertorte again. There’s no overt accusation here, but TexCat sure seems to want to get Meeko thinking in that direction. Second, I find it a bit suspicious that TexCat really wants to hear sach’s opinion of her. My experience has been that townies don’t tend to care that much about other people’s opinions of them, because they know that they’re town. Scum, on the other hand, can be very sensitive to any kind of pressure.
In light of all this,
Vote TexCat
Vote spawn

Ack. Rysto, are you a pondie who sincerely thinks that I’m scum? Or are you a scum who thought he saw an easy bandwagon forming from Sache’s post?

I had no idea I waffled so much! Geez, how many times can you use waffle in one post? My game from my point of view:

Summer 1: peeker goes crazy, accusing Ed of lieing, etc. I vote peeker.
Summer 2: Story claims vig with a drawback. I hate the claim, but am willing to give a real vig the opportunity to kill overnight, and make a weak vote for Mahaloth.
Summer 3: Story was not kill over winter by a real vig, but I am still totally convinced that he is scum. I vote story and try to make a case for others to vote him. When he’s not lysed, I suggest that he vig me. I know that he is not a vig and hope this will show the pond that he is lieing.
Summer 4: Story refuses to vig me, but the pond is not convinced that he’s lieing. I remain totally focused on his lame drawback claim. Kelly claims. Oddly enough, this is the one claim that looks reasonable to me at the outset. Perhaps because he just claimed and didn’t redact most of his claim. This is quickly shown to be a crock of pond sludge and I vote Kelly.
Summer 5: I am still voting Story! And then missed the rest of the week. :frowning:
Summer 6: After a long re-read and re-examination of the voting records, it looks to me like Natlaw and Sache are the most suspicious. I vote Natlaw. The other votes mostly are divided between Diggit, Rysto, and Sache. Diggit gets nervous and makes a claim to be bulletproof. I think that the claim is totally out of whack with the game so far; it doesn’t seem like it could possibly be true and I switch my vote to Diggit.

It has sure turned out awful, but I am not sure that I would change anything that I did, if I had to do it over again. Perhaps on summer 2, I might have left my vote on Story, instead of my weak vote on Mahaloth. Of course, in hindsight, that might have even been worse for pond. My other votes, I was totally convinced were going to catch scum. Rysto sure makes it sound like I was waffling and unsure of myself, but in my own head, I was sure of my votes.

A few minor corrections to Rysto’s posts:

He talks about me “smudging” Story. This is a little picky, but I don’t think that I ever “smudged” Story. I out and out called him a scummy liar. Again and again and again. I don’t think I ever waffled on him.

Rysto implies that I have some special knowledge of Kelly’s posts coming at the end of winter, but Kelly’s original claim was:

It’s true that Kelly said summer and not end of winter, but those seem equivalent to me.

I don’t like the case against Tex. It may just be because she is a low volume poster and I don’t have much of a read but i really don’t like Sach’s case and I think Rysto is barking up the wrong tree.

Basically, Sach’s case is looking at the lack of Scum power roles we’ve seen in the two we’ve caught and extrapolating that to there needs to be a power for the scum team which needs to be roughly equivalent to a known townie power. It just seems too far of a stretch to me. Rysto at least tried to do a post and vote analysis of Tex but I think the explanation given makes perfect sense.

I’m trying to think charitably of Sach coming out swinging toDay as trying to get us to talk and hopefully uncover on of the remaining scum since we’ve got to be close to LYLO. It reads more like a scum who got scared by being in a tie for second yesterDay and is hunting for any case to take the pressure off. I’m sure my vote will change as the Day moves along but after being a last minute voter yesterDay i’m going to start off with my vote where I ended it.

Vote Sach
Vote Spawn

Thanks. I was pretty happy with it. Whether it turns out right will be interesting.

I find this attitude strange from a Townie. I don’t see how you could be “totally convinced” about any of the votes or lynches. Even with Kelly Criterion, who made statements in direct contradiction to the game rules, I had some level of uncertainty. In other words, I wasn’t “totally convinced” with Kelly Criterion. I have trouble seeing how TexCat could be “totally convinced” about anyone else. From my view reaching a point where I can say I’m voting for “who I think is most likely to be scum” is tough enough to attain in this game, but getting to “totally convinced” that I’m voting for scum hardly ever happens without hard evidence (Investigations, counter-claims, etc).

Please explain. I acknowledge that my ‘case’ is largely supposition, but I don’t see how it “equally favors” TexCat being Town.

I’m not saying that it needs to be equivalent to a Town power (am I really that unclear?), but that I surmise that there is a high likelihood of there being something. We can eliminate godfather, we can eliminate roleblocker and redirector. So what remains? My point is that such a role fits in a symmetric way. Does it have to exist? No. But I provide reasons why I think it does.

I don’t think there is anything I can do that you won’t consider scummy. If I do A you will think A is scummy. If I do B you will think B is scummy.

And what you call ‘coming out swinging’ I call ‘responding to Meeko’s query.’

BTW, I agree that TexCat’s response to Rysto seems on the level. I’m only bothered by his statement of being “totally convinced” that he was voting for scum. Short of hard evidence, does anyone ever feel that way? Is it just me, or isn’t it more common that serious doubts bubble up when voting for someone?

I hope I’m not falling into that trap of seeing everything thing you’re doing as scummy or at least I’m trying not to.

I think that looking for symmetry is the same thing as saying it needs to be there, which is probably just a communication difference. Some roles need balance but I don’t think a psudo-scotsman is one of them.

I don’t know about being totally convinced being scummy thing. I was sure Alka was scum the last two Days before his death. I think we occasionally get reads on people that may or may not be correct but at the time it feels like they can’t be wrong. One thing I’ll point out in Tex’s defense is that while he was totally convinced about Story she was still voting for other people to insure that her votes were still relevant so ‘totally convinced’ did not translate into single minded pursuit which, in my opinion, is where it becomes a potentially scummy thing. Of course Rysto reads it differently than I do so opinions do differ.

What I mean is, of the hard evidence we have in favour of your theory, that evidence is equally in favour of TexCat being Town.

I’ve taken a walk (before I voted this time).

I don’t see any glaring mistakes in my thinking. I realize that many don’t like this type of gaming, but seriously, its not any worse than the crap reasons we vote to kill someone else. One could argue (and I will if pressed) that this type of analysis has some concrete foundations by building on the game structure. Of course it could be totally wrong, but so can voting for someone for ‘acting scummy.’

The main caveat that I encountered in re-thinking TexCat is that a vanilla Town volunteering to be killed in order to confirm storyteller is a plausible play. It certainly can be argued (and was) but it is sufficiently appealing that I can see a townie doing so. But TexCat did not volunteer to confirm storyteller, he volunteered to prove storyteller was wrong (which is a different thing in my opinion). In other words, TexCat wasn’t sacrificing himself to create a confirmed townie, but TexCat asserts he was so confident that storyteller was lying that he demanded storyteller prove him wrong.

vote TexCat
vote Spawn

(1) TexCat’s request to be eaten by storyteller makes more sense from the perspective of if he knew he would not die.
(2) TexCat’s level of certainty is too high for a Townie. He should not have such confidence that he is ‘totally convinced’ that he is voting for scum. Townies don’t have sufficient information to feel this way. This point relates back to (1) as well. TexCat should not have had such confidence that he was right about storyteller to the point of volunteering to die for it.

Am I “totally convinced?” Not even close, which ironically is kind of the point.

Uh. That’s a restatement, not an explanation. Please explain how that evidence favors TexCat being town please.

Ok, I’ll detail my thinking after work tonight.